A NEWER CANDIDATE FOR THE OLDEST ROCK ART – 66,000+ YEAR-OLD HAND PRINT:

 

Maltravieso Cave entrance. Photograph from httpwww.turismoextremadura.com.

Every so often I get to write another column for RockArtBlog about a newly announced date breaking the record for the oldest rock art. You will find links to a number of them in the cloud index at the bottom of this blog. My column of 13 February 2021 concerned a pictographic image on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that has been dated to at least 45,599 years ago. “Rock art researchers in Indonesia have announced the discovery of another candidate for the oldest representative rock art image, a picture of a Sulawesi Warty Pig found in a cave on the island of Sulawesi. The warty pig from Leang Tedongnge cave dates to at least 45,599 years ago, making it the earliest known representational work of art in the world (Sci-News 2021). Leang Tedongnge cave: the cave is located at the foot of a limestone karst hill. – (The) rock art panel is located on a ledge toward the rear of the cave and features at least three large figurative paintings of pigs.” (Faris 2021) Note that the researchers have limited their claim to “representative rock art” images, but not specifically defined what they intend that to mean. While we can all agree that a painting of a Warty Pig would be representative, one wonders what they would think of ancient hand prints. They cannot be called geometric or abstract so are they representative, or another special category?

Maltravieso Cave handprint (center of picture). Image from atlasobscura.com.

“Stencils and prints of the human hand are some of the earliest forms of deliberately created visual artwork preserved in the archaeological record. Maltravieso Cave houses more than 60 red hand stencils, but their precise ages have remained a mystery.” (Jackson 2024) This has now been corrected as a new paper describes the retrieval of Uranium-Thorium dates from carbonate crusts that have formed over a number of the handprints.

Photograph of Maltravieso Cave handprints above, and D-Stretch version below. Image from Standish et al., 2024, figure 6, page 6.

“U-Th dating of associated carbonate crusts has been applied to date parietal art in Maltravieso cave, Extremadura, Spain. Known for its large collection of red hand stencils (≥60), one example previously dated to >66.7 ka was taken to suggest Neandertal authorship. Here we present a more detailed U-series study of hand stencils within the cave, and place the results in the context of the chronology of these motifs worldwide. Twenty-two carbonate samples overlying pigment of hand stencils were dated from the cave’s Sala de las Pinturas and the Galería de la Serpiente. Minimum ages for the art range from the Holocene to the Middle Palaeolithic. Alongside published dating results from other sites, this demonstrates that Neandertals as well as modern humans could create these motifs.” (Standish et al. 2024:1)  These dates taken by Uranium-Thorium dating represent minimum ages because they are taken from material on top of the original hand print. This means that the actual hand prints must be even older. This minimum dating is pre-homo sapiens in this area so the hand prints must be Neanderthal.

 

Photograph of Maltravieso Cave handprints above, and D-Stretch version below. Image from Standish et al., 2024, figure 5, page 5.

Christopher Standish et al. (2024) re-stated this in their conclusions. “U-Th dating of carbonate crusts overlying painted rock art in Maltravieso cave indicates that the tradition of making hand stencils in Europe began prior to the Aurignacian; a conclusion that is consistent with wider chronological information for examples elsewhere. In Maltravieso, two samples from one stencil, including one sequence of four sub-samples that demonstrates closed-system behaviour of the carbonate and therefore reliability of the dates, gave minimum ages well within the range of the Middle Palaeolithic and long before the Initial Upper Palaeolithic; the oldest of these being 66.7 ka. Together with published dating evidence from sites elsewhere in the world, this suggests that Neandertals as well as modern humans created these enigmatic motifs.” (Standish et al. 2024:9) And as I said above “These dates taken by Uranium-Thorium dating represent minimum ages because they are taken from material on top of the original hand print. This means that the actual hand prints must be even older. This minimum dating is pre-homo sapiens in this area so the hand prints must be Neanderthal.”

In other words, the handprint was made considerably earlier than the arrival of modern humans in the area – thus, Neanderthal.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter, 2021, A New Candidate for the Oldest Pictograph – The Sulawesi Pig, 13 February 2021. https://rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Jackson, Justin, 2024, Neanderthals were making hand stencil rock art more than 66,000 years ago, U-series dating suggests, 4 December 2024, Phys.org (online). Accessed online 4 December 2024.

Standish, Christopher D. et al., 2024, The age of hand stencils in Maltravieso cave (Extremadura, Spain) established by U-Th dating, and its implications for the early development of art, 19 November 2024, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 61, www.elsevier.com/locate/jasrep. Accessed online 3 December 2024.